Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) at Common Networks

What is Internet Protocol and IPv6?

Internet Protocol (IP) is a system for addressing that allows computers on the internet to find each other.

According to Wikipedia, "Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv6 was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to deal with the long-anticipated problem of IPv4 address exhaustion. IPv6 is intended to replace IPv4."

"Devices on the Internet are assigned a unique IP address for identification and location definition. With the rapid growth of the Internet after commercialization in the 1990s, it became evident that far more addresses would be needed to connect devices than the IPv4 address space had available."

"IPv6 addresses are represented as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits with the groups being separated by colons, for example 2001:0db8:0000:0042:0000:8a2e:0370:7334, but methods to abbreviate this full notation exist."

What is my IPv6 address?

To quickly find your IP address, you can do a Google search for my IP address.

Each customer is assigned a public /56 subnet.

Your gateway address will be ::1 of your subnet. For example, if your assigned range is 2604:b2c0:299:9900::/56, then your gateway’s address will be 2604:b2c0:299:9900::1. This is also the address of the local DNS server. Addresses ::0 through ::7 are reserved.Our DHCPv6 server will assign addresses in your range between ::101 and ::7ff. As an example, you might receive an address of 2604:b2c0:299:9900::2a6 on your device

I’m using my own router. How do I use IPv6 on my router?

If you’re using your own router, you can still use your IPv4 addressing. However you can also use IPv6 addressing. Just double-check that your router and devices support IPv6 (most routers do). You may need to check your documentation for the exact steps to enable IPv6 as it will depend on your particular router model.

In general, however, you can follow these steps:

Assign your router’s WAN address by setting it to SLAAC or DHCPv6.

Set the LAN IPv6 range for the router to use for its client devices. An example configuration (using the same example address as above) is to assign 2604:b2c0:299:9901::/64 as the LAN range and then to select either of the SLAAC or DHCPv6 Server options on your router.

Is this a public IP address?

Yes, all your IPv6 capable devices will receive a unique public IP address.

Is this a static IP address?

Although your IP address should not change often, it is possible that it can from time to time.

I would like to host from my home server (e.g. media server, SSH, FTP). Can I access these from outside my network?

For security purposes, we do not currently allow open ports to allow for external access into our network. Port forwarding is a product feature we are considering in the future.

My work requires me to whitelist my IP address to VPN into my work network. How do I do this?

You can find your IP address by doing a Google search from the device you use for work for my IP address. You can then whitelist the shown IP address.

Please remember that while it won’t change often, your IP address may change from time to time. If it is difficult to update your IP address at work, you may want to look into a third party Dynamic DNS service, which can help you to keep your address updated automatically.